I am just turning 7 years old, and on a Sunday, while mum and dad were still preoccupied with the business of trying to make a living for us all, mum found she had to send us along so Sunday School by ourselves. Normally she would go with us as a good parent in those days always would. But with the demands of the business, and no way that we could be allowed to go without the good guidance that we could only get from the Church of England, we dutifully went along to Sunday School.

Actually, this then became another interesting time since the actual Sunday School was only about an hour, and we knew that we would not be missed if we stayed away for half the day. Parents in the 50s did not fret nearly as much about their children as they do today. So, off we set for Sunday School to be taught lessons from the bible and about how much god loves us and how importantly we need to be good so that god would not throw us into hell forever. That bit of fear motivation duly installed worked like a charm and no way would we not go to church and just get away and play as we would naturally be inclined to do.

On a Sunday morning, Sunday School time before we could go and play, we had to dress in our best clothes and had mum’s careful instruction on what we had to do during our weekly reporting to god. We knew when to kneel, when to stand, when to sit, when to sing, and so on. I didn’t mind going through this ritual by the numbers and could satisfy all the regulations, perform all the actions on cue, and get a good report from the clerics to my mother, and that kept everyone happy.

Although Sunday School was only for the children, we were not exempted from having the plate passed around and we would be much frowned upon if we did not put into the plate our "offering". It didn’t matter how much money you put in, the important thing was that you put in some money. Mum no doubt thought this was a good lesson for her children to learn about giving a little to charity. The considered amount was three pence (or thrupence as we would say then) which really was a lot of money to us and at that early age, and I actually did begrudge having to cough it up to the people with the white collars when I could put to so much better purpose. So even at that young age at Sunday School I was forming opinions about all this church business and certainly that much did seem a bit excessive. But what could I do? There was no way of passing the plate along without putting something into it.

Mum would often give me one coin, a small thrupenny coin and I had no choice but to put the whole thing into the plate. I soon worked out a plan, and told mum that for the money for Sunday school, it needed to be in three one penny coins. Maybe mum thought I wanted to make a bigger show of putting three big pennies in the plate instead of one small thrupenny coin, but she didn’t ask too many questions, and gave me three penny coins and off I went to Sunday school. But my cunning plan was that I could now use two pennies for myself to buy sweets on the way to Sunday school but still have one penny to put in the plate and pretend that this was as much as mum could afford that week.

The three pennies plan always worked perfectly when they were available, but sometimes when we were heading out to Sunday school, mum just didn’t have enough penny coins and had to give us just the one thrupence coin. This was a disaster. I could not buy sweets because there was no way that I could duck out of putting the coin in the plate. I thought about putting the thrupence in and taking out 2 pennies change, but I was pretty sure that would get me into even bigger trouble, so I never tried it.

I remember this so clearly that I was devastated several times because of this monetary coinage problem, and just why I could not simply change the coin on the way to the church and get what I wanted and still have a penny for the plate I cannot explain. I certainly do remember that putting nothing in the collection plate at Sunday school was simply not an option. I don’t think that I was too worried about god being mad at me, but it would not have gone well if word got back to mum that I didn’t put any money in the plate when she had given me the thrupence for that purpose. The jig would have been up and unknown consequences would certainly be coming my way, although I had no idea what the consequences would have been. My plan always worked so thankfully I never had to find out.

And here endeth this week's Sunday School lesson.